Post 00652
Created:
Modified:
The careful yarding habit of the moose is an excellent method of triumphing over deep snow. In early winter, or with the deepening snow, a moose family proceed to a locality where food is abundant; here they restrict themselves to a small stamping-ground,–one of a stone’s throw or a few hundred feet radius. Constant tramping and feeding in this limited area compacts the snow in spaces and in all the trails so that the animals walk on top of it. Each additional snow is in turn trampled to sustaining compactness.
At first the low-growing herbage is eaten; but when this is buried, and the animals are raised up by added snow, they feed upon shrubs; then on the willow or the birch tops, and sometimes on limbs well up in the trees, which the platform of deeply accumulated snow enables them to reach. Commonly moose stay all winter in one yard. Sometimes the giving-out of the food-supply may drive them forth. Then they try to reach another yard. But deep snow or wolves may overcome one or all on the way.
During one snowshoe trip through western Colorado I visited seven deer-yards. One of these had been attacked by wolves but probably without result. Apparently five of the others had not as yet been visited by deadly enemies. The seventh and most interesting yard was situated in a deep gorge amid rugged mountains. It was long and narrow, and in it the deer had fed upon withered grass, plant stalks, and willow twigs. All around the undrifted snow lay deep. The limbless bases of the spruces were set deep in snow, and their lower limbs were pulled down and tangled in it. These trees had the appearance of having been pushed part way up through the snow. In places the cliffs showed their bare brown sides. Entire spruce groves had been tilted to sharp angles by the slipping and dragging snow weight on steep places; among them were tall spruces that appeared like great feathered arrows that had been shot into snowy steeps. The leafless aspens attractively displayed their white and greenish-white skin on limbs that were held just above the snow.